Artist Daniel Anguilu puts the finishing touches on mural titled Skywriting at Lawndale Art Center Friday, March 15, 2013, in Houston. The mural a collaboration between artists Daniel Anguilu and Aaron ... more

Photo: Melissa Phillip, Staff

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Daniel Anguilu, a graffiti muralist, stands in front of Nekst's mural, which he is fighting to save at the corner of Crawford and Elgin streets, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, in Houston. Anguilu paints gorgeous abstract murals that resemble stained glass. He's the outsider darling of the Houston art world; his work has been commissioned by the Glassell School, DiverseWorks, Lawndale Art Center and the Station Museum. Anguilu's latest project, though, isn't about art-world credibility. It's about saving the work of an old friend. Nekst, an internationally known graffiti painter who got his start in Houston, died last year under circumstances that are as mysterious as his real name. Right now, Anguilu is trying to cut a deal with a property owner to save one of Nekst's most visible remaining works in Houston, a mural in Midtown. In exchange for allowing Nekst's mural to survive, Anguilu has agreed to curate and manage a "permission wall" on the property, a place for some of the city's top street artists to show their stuff. ( Karen Warren / Houston Chronicle ) less

Daniel Anguilu, a graffiti muralist, stands in front of Nekst's mural, which he is fighting to save at the corner of Crawford and Elgin streets, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, in Houston. Anguilu paints gorgeous ... more

Photo: Karen Warren, Staff

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Daniel Anguilu, a graffiti muralist, stands in front of Nekst's mural, which he is fighting to save at the corner of Crawford and Elgin streets, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, in Houston. Anguilu paints gorgeous abstract murals that resemble stained glass. He's the outsider darling of the Houston art world; his work has been commissioned by the Glassell School, DiverseWorks, Lawndale Art Center and the Station Museum. Anguilu's latest project, though, isn't about art-world credibility. It's about saving the work of an old friend. Nekst, an internationally known graffiti painter who got his start in Houston, died last year under circumstances that are as mysterious as his real name. Right now, Anguilu is trying to cut a deal with a property owner to save one of Nekst's most visible remaining works in Houston, a mural in Midtown. In exchange for allowing Nekst's mural to survive, Anguilu has agreed to curate and manage a "permission wall" on the property, a place for some of the city's top street artists to show their stuff. ( Karen Warren / Houston Chronicle ) less

Daniel Anguilu, a graffiti muralist, stands in front of Nekst's mural, which he is fighting to save at the corner of Crawford and Elgin streets, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, in Houston. Anguilu paints gorgeous ... more

Photo: Karen Warren, Staff

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Muralist Daniel Anguilu has been working to save this piece by his friend Sean Griffin, better known as Nekst.

Muralist Daniel Anguilu has been working to save this piece by his friend Sean Griffin, better known as Nekst.

Photo: Karen Warren, Staff

Image 5 of 14

Daniel Anguilu, a graffiti muralist, stands in front of Nekst's mural, which he is fighting to save at the corner of Crawford and Elgin streets, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, in Houston. Anguilu paints gorgeous abstract murals that resemble stained glass. He's the outsider darling of the Houston art world; his work has been commissioned by the Glassell School, DiverseWorks, Lawndale Art Center and the Station Museum. Anguilu's latest project, though, isn't about art-world credibility. It's about saving the work of an old friend. Nekst, an internationally known graffiti painter who got his start in Houston, died last year under circumstances that are as mysterious as his real name. Right now, Anguilu is trying to cut a deal with a property owner to save one of Nekst's most visible remaining works in Houston, a mural in Midtown. In exchange for allowing Nekst's mural to survive, Anguilu has agreed to curate and manage a "permission wall" on the property, a place for some of the city's top street artists to show their stuff. ( Karen Warren / Houston Chronicle ) less

Daniel Anguilu, a graffiti muralist, stands in front of Nekst's mural, which he is fighting to save at the corner of Crawford and Elgin streets, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, in Houston. Anguilu paints gorgeous ... more

Photo: Karen Warren, Staff

Image 6 of 14

Daniel Anguilu, a graffiti muralist, stands in front of Nekst's mural, which he is fighting to save at the corner of Crawford and Elgin streets, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, in Houston. Anguilu paints gorgeous abstract murals that resemble stained glass. He's the outsider darling of the Houston art world; his work has been commissioned by the Glassell School, DiverseWorks, Lawndale Art Center and the Station Museum. Anguilu's latest project, though, isn't about art-world credibility. It's about saving the work of an old friend. Nekst, an internationally known graffiti painter who got his start in Houston, died last year under circumstances that are as mysterious as his real name. Right now, Anguilu is trying to cut a deal with a property owner to save one of Nekst's most visible remaining works in Houston, a mural in Midtown. In exchange for allowing Nekst's mural to survive, Anguilu has agreed to curate and manage a "permission wall" on the property, a place for some of the city's top street artists to show their stuff. ( Karen Warren / Houston Chronicle ) less

Daniel Anguilu, a graffiti muralist, stands in front of Nekst's mural, which he is fighting to save at the corner of Crawford and Elgin streets, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, in Houston. Anguilu paints gorgeous ... more

Photo: Karen Warren, Staff

Image 7 of 14

Angel Quesada touches up his artwork painted on a building at the corner of Crawford and Elgin streets, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, in Houston. Daniel Anguilu, a graffiti muralist, paints gorgeous abstract murals that resemble stained glass. He's the outsider darling of the Houston art world; his work has been commissioned by the Glassell School, DiverseWorks, Lawndale Art Center and the Station Museum. Anguilu's latest project, though, isn't about art-world credibility. It's about saving the work of an old friend. Nekst, an internationally known graffiti painter who got his start in Houston, died last year under circumstances that are as mysterious as his real name. Right now, Anguilu is trying to cut a deal with a property owner to save one of Nekst's most visible remaining works in Houston, a mural in Midtown. In exchange for allowing Nekst's mural to survive, Anguilu has agreed to curate and manage a "permission wall" on the property, a place for some of the city's top street artists to show their stuff. ( Karen Warren / Houston Chronicle ) less

Angel Quesada touches up his artwork painted on a building at the corner of Crawford and Elgin streets, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, in Houston. Daniel Anguilu, a graffiti muralist, paints gorgeous abstract murals ... more

Photo: Karen Warren, Staff

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Angel Quejada touches up a new mural at 3000 Crawford. "Street art is exploding right now in Houston," he says.

Angel Quejada touches up a new mural at 3000 Crawford. "Street art is exploding right now in Houston," he says.

Photo: Karen Warren, Staff

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Angel Quesada touches up his artwork painted on a building at the corner of Crawford and Elgin streets, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, in Houston. Daniel Anguilu, a graffiti muralist, paints gorgeous abstract murals that resemble stained glass. He's the outsider darling of the Houston art world; his work has been commissioned by the Glassell School, DiverseWorks, Lawndale Art Center and the Station Museum. Anguilu's latest project, though, isn't about art-world credibility. It's about saving the work of an old friend. Nekst, an internationally known graffiti painter who got his start in Houston, died last year under circumstances that are as mysterious as his real name. Right now, Anguilu is trying to cut a deal with a property owner to save one of Nekst's most visible remaining works in Houston, a mural in Midtown. In exchange for allowing Nekst's mural to survive, Anguilu has agreed to curate and manage a "permission wall" on the property, a place for some of the city's top street artists to show their stuff. ( Karen Warren / Houston Chronicle ) less

Angel Quesada touches up his artwork painted on a building at the corner of Crawford and Elgin streets, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, in Houston. Daniel Anguilu, a graffiti muralist, paints gorgeous abstract murals ... more

Photo: Karen Warren, Staff

Image 10 of 14

Daniel Anguilu, a graffiti muralist, walks past a new painting at the corner of Crawford and Elgin streets, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, in Houston. Anguilu paints gorgeous abstract murals that resemble stained glass. He's the outsider darling of the Houston art world; his work has been commissioned by the Glassell School, DiverseWorks, Lawndale Art Center and the Station Museum. Anguilu's latest project, though, isn't about art-world credibility. It's about saving the work of an old friend. Nekst, an internationally known graffiti painter who got his start in Houston, died last year under circumstances that are as mysterious as his real name. Right now, Anguilu is trying to cut a deal with a property owner to save one of Nekst's most visible remaining works in Houston, a mural in Midtown. In exchange for allowing Nekst's mural to survive, Anguilu has agreed to curate and manage a "permission wall" on the property, a place for some of the city's top street artists to show their stuff. ( Karen Warren / Houston Chronicle ) less

The top art is the work of Daniel Anguilu, a graffiti muralist, on a building with other graffiti artists at the corner of Crawford and Elgin streets, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, in Houston. Anguilu paints gorgeous abstract murals that resemble stained glass. He's the outsider darling of the Houston art world; his work has been commissioned by the Glassell School, DiverseWorks, Lawndale Art Center and the Station Museum. Anguilu's latest project, though, isn't about art-world credibility. It's about saving the work of an old friend. Nekst, an internationally known graffiti painter who got his start in Houston, died last year under circumstances that are as mysterious as his real name. Right now, Anguilu is trying to cut a deal with a property owner to save one of Nekst's most visible remaining works in Houston, a mural in Midtown. In exchange for allowing Nekst's mural to survive, Anguilu has agreed to curate and manage a "permission wall" on the property, a place for some of the city's top street artists to show their stuff. ( Karen Warren / Houston Chronicle ) less

The top art is the work of Daniel Anguilu, a graffiti muralist, on a building with other graffiti artists at the corner of Crawford and Elgin streets, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, in Houston. Anguilu paints gorgeous ... more

Photo: Karen Warren, Staff

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The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit commissioned graffiti writers Dont, Vizie, Pose, Revok and Skrew to paint tributes to Houston-born graffiti legend Nekst on two of its large walls. The south wall is shown here in September 2013. less

The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit commissioned graffiti writers Dont, Vizie, Pose, Revok and Skrew to paint tributes to Houston-born graffiti legend Nekst on two of its large walls. The south wall is shown ... more

Photo: Colin M. Day

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Houston mural artist Daniel Anguilu, says he wrote 'The earth is but one country and mankind it's citizens.' on the Houston Baha'i Center, Wednesday, Jan. 30, in Houston. Anguilu explains that he used symbolism that would represent different religions. Anguilu says he uses house and spray paint for his murals. ( Nick de la Torre / Houston Chronicle ) less

Houston mural artist Daniel Anguilu, says he wrote 'The earth is but one country and mankind it's citizens.' on the Houston Baha'i Center, Wednesday, Jan. 30, in Houston. Anguilu explains that he used symbolism ... more

Photo: Nick De La Torre, Staff

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Daniel Anguilu has become the Houston art world's favorite outsider muralist. In March, he joined fine-art painter Aaron Parazette to paint the mural on the side of Lawndale Art and Performance Center.

Daniel Anguilu has become the Houston art world's favorite outsider muralist. In March, he joined fine-art painter Aaron Parazette to paint the mural on the side of Lawndale Art and Performance Center.

Photo: Melissa Phillip, Staff

Muralist wants to save work of his friend, grafitti artist Nekst

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Back to Gallery

"So that's the wall," Daniel Anguilu said. It was freezing, and we were standing in a Midtown parking lot. I was trying to figure out why Daniel cared so much.

"NEKST," said the graffiti piece that he hoped to save. The spray-painted lettering showed some skill, but skill was never really the point with Nekst, who died in December 2012. Nekst was an international king of a kind of graffiti that never appealed to me: the kind that's about splattering your street name on things, as often as possible, as visibly as possible, whether or not you have permission. Across the globe, Nekst roller-painted his name on billboards and walls and water towers; he spray-painted it on stop signs and trains and overpasses. He was fearless and completely lawless, other graf painters say. They mean it as a compliment.

Daniel struck me as a completely different kind of painter. He doesn't sign his murals; I'd loved them for years before I could put a name on them. Abstract, they resemble stained glass if stained glass grew like a vine. They're often accompanied by a little peace-and-justice message - something like, "The fruits of the earth belong to us all, and earth itself to nobody." He always gets permission before painting.

Daniel's murals were one part gift, one part sermon: I felt better when I saw them. Nekst's name felt like an assault: He stole my attention, wedged his name in my head against my will.

"Tell me what's important about this wall," I said, looking at Nekst's name. It occupied a prime spot on the parking-lot side of XL Parts, a windowless brick building at 3000 Crawford. The blue-and-white letters looked as though they were constructed from bits of shattered mirror. They seemed to drip with honey; little shiny arrows came off them here and there. You could tell that it was one of the relatively rare pieces that Nekst had permission to paint. Usually his style was simple. But here, where he didn't have to worry about running from the cops, he could take the time to be ornate.

Daniel explained that although Nekst painted all over the world, he grew up and got his start in Houston. That his work was disappearing. That this 2009 wall was the last thing he'd painted legally in Houston, with permission, which made it easier to save.

I waited.

"He was my friend," said Daniel.

Spray paint

In the early '90s, when Daniel was 14, his family moved from Mexico City to Houston. One day, a Bellaire High School friend saw a photo of graffiti in an alternative newspaper he'd bought at record store. Two days later, he told Daniel to meet him behind a building. He had spray paint.

For a couple of years, Daniel helped out while his friend did the kind of graffiti that kids do: basic tagging, running-from-the-cops stuff. One day, a kid who noticed Daniel's painted backpack asked, "Do you write?" Daniel didn't know what that meant. The stranger explained, and told him that graf writers from all over the city showed their work inside an abandoned building north of downtown. There, Daniel saw what graf painting could be, and he started networking with other kids who painted. By the time he was 16, graffiti was his life. Trespassing and painting abandoned buildings without permission didn't strike him as immoral, just illegal. "I never questioned it," he says.

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Lifestyle

Somewhere along the line he met Sean Griffin - or Nekst, as he was known on the street - and his brother Patrick. They painted in the same crew. It didn't matter that the Griffins were white, or that, as sons of an architect and an artist, they'd grown up surrounded by the visual arts, in a house full of art supplies. All that mattered was that they were painting.

After high school, Daniel and Sean left Houston, going their separate ways, but neither gave up graffiti. Daniel traveled from place to place - Barcelona, Madrid, Mexico City, Chiapas- always painting, always crashing with other graf painters.

Sean, too, moved around. Friends say it seemed as though he was often living in two cities at once. He briefly studied art at Texas Tech, in Lubbock, then came back to Houston. While Patrick went to art school in Kansas City and Oakland, Sean lived in those cities, too. He lived in Detroit, in Chicago, in New York. Every place he went, he wrote "Nekst" wherever he could.

Nekst was known for his boldness, for the size and legibility of his letters, for simply having his tag in such a number of places that astounded even other graf writers. To paint a wall four stories up, he'd hang out a window with his brother holding onto him. To paint a billboard, he'd hold onto the sign with one hand and spray paint with the other.

Sean loved the thrill. In a 2002 interview, he described painting trains in Australia: "You get to be a ninja. You have to be intelligent about your stuff, you have to do your homework and you have to (expletive) run. But you're still trying to do something creative and impressive within a short timeframe."

Sean operated in strange overlapping circles of poverty and wealth, low society and high, fine art and graffiti. His parents, Mike and Nancy Griffin, were never sure how he made his money, but they noted that his apartments were decorated in a spare modern style that doesn't come cheap. He liked to wear a suit and tie, and as a hostess gift, he favored a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne.

In those elegant apartments, he kept his paint on a shelf six cans deep. It was organized by the colors of the rainbow.

Turning points

Ten years ago, Daniel began to question everything about his life. Why keep breaking the law? he asked himself after a brush with police in Mexico City. Why be so egotistic, always painting his street name? Why not paint in a way that did something for other people?

He told his mother that he planned go straight and move to Madrid. The painting style there was freer, more artistic. She asked, Why not stay in Houston and do that here?

At first, on the east side of town, he looked for ugly walls, then knocked on a door and asked the owner if he could paint them. To support himself, he got a job driving light-rail trains for Metro. He never planned to make a career as an artist. He just wanted to paint.

Sean had plenty of his own potential turning points: fights with other graf writers, scrapes with the police.

Sean's parents were excited when he began working as the assistant to custom furniture maker Chris Bach, a former graf writer in Chicago. Sean even made his father an inlaid cherry desk.

For Christmas 2012, the Griffins made arrangements to spend the holiday together at a rented cabin in upstate New York. But as Sean's parents were driving to the cabin, they got a call. It was from Patrick. Sean, he told them, had died. He'd overdosed.

Tributes

Daniel knew that Nekst/Sean was a big deal in the graf world. Even so, the outpouring of tribute paintings surprised him. Other writers wrote Nekst's name in giant letters in Miami, Los Angeles, Detroit and San Francisco. In Brooklyn, one tribute wall stretched three blocks. The artist Banksy posted a Nekst tribute on his website. In September, a group of artists including his brother Patrick painted two enormous walls of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Detroit with Nekst's name.

In Houston, a video about Nekst and an indoor tribute that Patrick painted were part of a show that Daniel helped arrange at the Station Museum. In the past few years, Daniel had become the Houston art world's favorite outsider muralist: The guy who rounded up other high-quality painters, the guy whose work appeared in places like the Glassell School of Art and the Lawndale Art and Performance Center.

Sean's family was there. His father, Mike, was moved. He still struggles with Sean's fame.

"It's a paradox," he said. "Sean was well known, respected in his world, for doing something that's basically illegal. I don't understand it. I accept it. But I don't understand it."

On Monday, the day that would have been Sean's 35th birthday, his family plans to gather, remember him, and drink a Veuve Clicquot toast.

In the meantime, Daniel, 35, is pouring his own grief and mixed feelings into saving that Nekst wall in Midtown. He's worked out a trade: The side wall will stay the way it is on the condition that Daniel and a hand-picked crew of artists (among them: Lee Washington, Dandee Warhol, Nicky Davis, Deck WGF, Ack! and Angel Quesada) paint the front wall with "more arty" murals that the owner prefers.